Saturday, October 18, 2014

Stadt Rundfunk Visit

Waiting at my train stop in Saarbruecken.  The red brick and fog is pretty standard:


On Wednesday we visited the Stadt Rundfunk office (public radio and television).  Germany has an interesting set up with public radio and television. Every state is required to have a provider that is completely separated from advertising and government monetary influence- it's supposed to be for the people by the people.  To fund the services, every one in Germany who lives in a permanent dwelling, regardless of whether or not they have a TV or Radio, must pay a monthly bill directly to the programming group.

The Stadt Rundfunk office is located on top of one of the mountains (steep hills) in Saarbruecken.  We were given tours by higher-ups at the station- it was really cool.

We were taken into the symphony hall, where a philharmonic was recording a performance for a future radio broadcast.  We sat in for 5-10 minutes and got to listen to them play.  Some of the Erasmus and international students (from Jordan and France) had never heard a live symphony before. For the rest of the day, all they could talk about was how it gave them chills and that desperately needed to buy tickets for a show while they were here.

We also went into the studio for the nightly news. Our tour guide explained to us the nuances of lighting design (300+ lights required to create the correct effect) and camera positioning.  I enjoyed the behind the scenes perspective and being in the vicinity of 1,000,000 euros worth of video equipment.

After the video tours, we went to the radio DJ's recording studio.  We walked in during a back-to-back song segment to briefly talk with the DJ, but we ended up staying much longer.  The DJ was extremely hilarious, jaded, and professional.  She would be joking with us a


bout how she hated the music she played and that the grunts in the basement had the real power- until a song ended. Almost mid-sentence, she would signal for all 20 of us in her office to be quiet, quickly put her headphones on, and then deliver her spiel. Example:

"Those grunts make me play Taylor Swift, well actually people actually-" *Puts hand up to silence us*

German: "Ladies and gentleman that was Taylor Swift with her newest single Shakkeeeee itt offfff. Next up we have Ryan Adams- don't forget to call in for our prize giveaway afterwards!" *flips of microphone*

"Ugh prize giveaways can be such a disaster..."

I was left with the impression that I could never do radio.

And then we visited the youth radio DJ.  "It's pretty much the exact same thing, except hip music and the DJ uses informal 'du' form instead of formal 'sie' form."


The DJ was also really cool, and let us hang out while he did some transitions and program highlights.  He did a bit covering the German national soccer teams tie against Ireland.  The DJ caught a flub from Lukas Podolski in the aftergame interview and was brutal in making fun of him.

Background: Podolski is famous for saying, "Football (soccer) is like chess, only without the dice"

This time Podolski was accidentally optimistic about his upcoming game against "Giblatar" - instead of "Gibraltar." The DJ isolated the flub and played it on repeat for a good few seconds.

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